We decided to become Approved Mental Health Professionals as we felt an anger deep inside which just wouldn’t go away. Faced with daily experiences of people’s human rights being ignored and in some instances abused we felt that we had to do something. We are social workers who are working with people with a learning disability and these are the things that made us angry:

People with a learning disability who remain on a section of the Mental Health Act for years because professionals say that “the risks are just too high”.

People with a learning disability who have done something wrong in their past but who are not allowed to leave this behind, however many years have past since the original incident with no evidence of another incident having occurred.

People being assessed to death with no actual outcomes, changes or progress as a result of the professional assessment.

Here is an example of where you might see some of these issues in your practice as a social worker. Imagine that you have been asked to support a person who has been detained under a Section of the Mental Health Act in a hospital 100 miles from their family. The person is described to you by the doctor who makes the referral as having a ‘mild learning disability’ (what does this actually mean?). When you make contact with the person, you find out that they have been locked up in a hospital for over 10 years. As you ask more questions you start to find out more things which at first worry you and eventually start to make you angry about their rights. You find out that had they been convicted of a minor offence for the reason which they are detained under the Mental Health Act for, the conviction would have been spent by now. They have had regular MDT reviews and Tribunals, yet despite all this professional intevention nothing has changed since they were first detained. They are on a concoction of psychiatric medication to stop any natural behaviours, feelings or emotions sneaking out. They are deemed to be a continuing high risk by the clinical team and they recommend a lot more work before they are ready for release. In practice, this means they attend a course 1 day a week which involves taking a walk around the grounds. When you meet the person face to face you find that this person who the forms describe as being highly risky is intelligent, articulate, shows insight into what had happened and why. They ask you why they can’t go out more, be closer to their family and prepare for leaving the hospital and moving on. They sum up their circumstances better than any of the ‘professionals’ involved – ‘I’m 30 and I’m spending the best years of my life in here with people I don’t want to be with, away from my family, for what reason?’

We decided that to try and combat some of what we found. So that we could work to promote people’s rights we decided that we would go back to University and train to become AMHPs. Lots of people have told us along the way that they couldn’t see us as AMHPs. They thought that we would struggle with the potentially oppressive powers which we would hold as an AMHP interpreting caveats to human rights which for over 200 years have been dominated by the views of doctors applying a clinical/medical lens to people (Kinney 2009). They thought that being an AMHP would feel to be too far from what social work values stand for as they thought that AMHPs were about making compulsory detentions and admissions to hospital happen to manage perceived risks (Buckland 2014). We don’t agree. We think that being right in the heart of decisions, challenging the medical view of people being a risk to themselves and others, gives us the perfect starting place to prevent significant injustice by advocating for and upholding people’s rights, challenging assumptions, oppressive and risk adverse practices. It means we can get involved in looking for alternatives to give people a chance at living the life they want to live.

Challenging this system isn’t easy, it’s powerful. But whilst detention is the ultimate infringement of someone’s liberty, it shouldn’t mean their rights, wishes and feelings are pushed aside. So with that in mind, we are more determined than ever to bring a right’s based approach to mental health, learning disabilities social work and any other social work we get near!